Al Carter, deputy director of the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs, addresses the audience inside the Tradition Town Hall in Port St. Lucie about the history and overview of the site selection process on April 8, 2015 for the Ardie R. Copas State Veterans' Nursing Home during a preliminary design meeting. (FILE PHOTO)(Photo: ERIC HASERT)Buy Photo

The original artist rendering of the Ardie R. Copas State Veterans Nursing Home in Tradition. The federal government changed its requirements for such facilities after this version of the project was approved. The new version will cost $58.9 million, instead of the originally projected $39 million.

Editor's Note: This story was updated from its original version to reflect the correct amount needed for the project.

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — At least three states say the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to formally notify them of a significant policy change in the construction requirements for veterans nursing homes, in turn threatening the future of at least one facility.

More states — possibly the remaining 47 and Puerto Rico — could be clueless about the sudden shift in policy, veterans officials said.

'To the best of my knowledge, nobody has received that letter — no state,' said Fred Sganga, legislative officer of the National Association of State Veterans Homes.

The communication breakdown already has halted plans for Florida's seventh veterans nursing home, slated for St. Lucie County, potentially jeopardizing the project if officials can't come up with another $20 million from the federal government and the state.

'We don't want to be held hostage by a design guide that doesn't recognize the state's ability to provide what they need for the veterans living in their state,' said Sganga, who also is executive director of the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook, New York.

Sganga said he never received formal notification of the policy change.

It costs an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent more to build and operate a home to the higher standard than a traditional veterans nursing home, Sganga said.

The apparent information fumble by the federal government is troubling, said Florida state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart. Negron helped spearhead the campaign to have the home built in St. Lucie County.

'I'm not going to stand by and let our veterans become a causality to Washington nonsense,' Negron said.

The maneuver is typical 'Washington inside baseball,' Negron said.

'I never heard of these standards (or) the need for these standards,' Negron added. 'It sounds like this is a retroactive issue being applied in a bizarre way to an agreement that was reached.'

Florida — home to the third-largest population of veterans in the nation — only learned of the change by word-of-mouth at a February meeting of state veterans-affairs directors in Alexandria, Virginia, state officials said. They discovered that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was holding them to a more-expensive set of design standards — known as the Community Living Centers Design Guide — which differs from a traditional nursing home, said Steve Murray, Florida Department of Veterans' Affairs communications and external-affairs director.

Mike Prendergast, former executive director of the Florida veterans department, in a March 3 letter to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert A. McDonald, voiced concern over the unexpected policy change and the rising costs of the $39 million project.

'It is important to note that there was no formal notification provided from the USDVA Central Office to indicate that from a particular date forward, any states building state veterans nursing homes or applying for new grants would have to build them to CLC Design Guide standards versus conventional nursing-home standards,' Prendergast wrote.

McDonald could not be reached for comment.

Florida was to begin work on the St. Lucie County home in January and complete it by 2018. The funding snafu could delay the project by a year, delay it indefinitely or kill it altogether, county veterans officials have said.

While the federal government claims the design guide is policy, the guide itself contradicts that.

'This volume is meant to be a guide, not a code or regulation,' the guide states. 'It reflects the best practices of care and supporting facility-design concepts ...'

Nevertheless, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said the guidebook first was published as a regulation in 2001, amended in 2011 and 2015 and always has been policy.

The terms 'published' and 'becoming regulation' are synonymous, said Henry Huntley, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman.

Officials at the Rhode Island Division of Veterans Affairs and Idaho Division of Veterans Services said they, too, never received formal notification of any change in design criteria.

Idaho was made aware of the new policy approximately six weeks ago and only after officials contacted the federal government for clarification on the guide, said David Brasuell, administrator of the Idaho Division of Veterans Services and president of the National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs.

'We were under the impression that based on the CLC guidelines that they were guidelines,' Brasuell said.

Rhode Island made the discovery 'during our due-diligence in researching how to apply for the grant and our conversations with the VA on the process in 2011,' Michael P. Jolin, chief of veterans affairs in Rhode Island, said in an email.

Fortunately for Rhode Island, however, officials stumbled upon the change early in the design process for a $122 million, 208-bed nursing home. The state broke ground on the project last May.